Finding it hard to pray

Albrecht Durer, The Praying Hands

I have a prayer calender on my office desk. I turn it everyday, but glance at it but so often. Today though, O. Hallesby caught my eye and spoke my heart:

"The real purpose of our wrestling in prayer is to render us so impotent and helpless, not only in connection with our physical and spiritual needs, but, above all, our inability to pray, that our prayer really becomes a prayer for the Spirit of prayer."

Review: Wahaca (London)

I wanted a quick cheap lunch on the way to the drycleaners (The Boy had TWENTY-FOUR shirts to be washed and pressed!), and decided to try the new Mexican joint we walked past on Sunday.

Wahaca claims to serve Mexican street food, restaurant style. You have a choice of antojitos (Mexican tapas/dimsum) or a bigger mains. I like the flexibility of the former, cos it means I can eat a variety of small dishes for lunch. Am now a firm convert to the bento approach: eat small amounts, in big varieties - part of Persis' secret plan to living healthily and aging beautifully (one must start planning these things young, you know).

Anyways, back to Wahaca. I had a small platter of fish tacos (very hard to find good fish tacos) and green rice (actually brown rice blitzed with coriander and garlic). Was very impressed by the small selection and will definitely be back with more friends to try more. Unfortunately, if you are used to Mexican fast food in the States, Wahaca's will probably disappoint on the variety and price front - too little, too expensive. Has a fascinating (and serious) tequila menu - am very fascinated indeed. Friendly.

Wahaca
66 Chandos Place
Covent Garden
London WC2N 4HG

How predictable!

Which Sex and the City Character Are You?
	You are Charlotte. Fairytales were made for you. You've had your share of heartbreak, but that doesn't stop you from opening your heart to others and searching for your happily-ever-after. To some, you may appear naive and your romantic ideals far-fetched, but you know that someday, your Prince will come.
Find Your Character @ BrainFall.com

Review: Food For Thought (Singapore)

Pulled pork sandwich (with sweet potato in focaccia)
and broccoli soup

(Not to be confused with Food for Thought, the delightful vegetarian dungeon in Covent Garden, London)

It probably hasn't crossed your mind (or maybe I'm just slow) that good food and social enterprise can go together. Either that, or it resurrects memories of selling slush and cream puffs befuddledly bunged together at home at fun fairs when you were in school.

Food for Thought, then, is a revelation. Combining profits, philanthropy, and surprisingly refined chow, it is the brainchild of a friend of a friend and her friends. The pulled pork sandwich (I'm guessing credited to their American sous chef) is one of the best pulled pork I've had in a while, although it resounded more of roast pork with crackling. And who would ever have thought of putting braised pork (lobak) in a sandwich? The soups, too, are consistently of a high standard, and it now comes in a combo platter (half sandwich + soup) for S$7.50. It's always a pleasant surprise when casual food is not put together casually, more so in a cafe as tiny as this. As much as this is food for thought, you'll find that a lot of thought has been put in the food too.

Always ready to surprise, the desserts are not made by the cafe, but a showcase for local hidden talents. Are you a lawyer by day and a domestic goddess at heart? Do you think you make the best durian/chocolate/black forest cake in Singapore? Then maybe you need to check out Food for Thought's dessert talent time.

Some of the causes supported by Food for Thought: tuition for poor students, water aid in East Timor. You can also contribute to the waiters/waitresses' university fund.

Plus, it's just opposite the new National Library.

Coming out of the Food for Thought experience, I'm not just happy I had a good casual bite. I'm inspired. Something inside of me wonders: can I do this too? Food, books, fashion, and skiing anyone?

Food for Thought
420 North Bridge Road
North Bridge Centre
#01-06
Singapore 188727

Flowers in Singapore

From The Boy. Flowers make me feel all cuddly inside.

The Saul question (rambly thoughts)

I was reading 1 Samuel 5-9 this morning (catching up on my McCheyne readings, as you can tell). The Israelites had asked God for a king, and God sent Samuel to warn them that a king would ultimately enslave them. Yet the Israelites insisted that they wanted a king. So God gave them Saul.

Is the moral of the story that, if we persist in asking for what we desire, God will give in to our demands, even though it is not His best for us? That's certainly true of sin (Romans 1:24). But then I thought of all the things I had begged God for, and yet He had withheld them (wisely, on hindsight) from me. God didn't give in to me at the time. So what's up?

It must have had something to do with what the Israelites had asked for that was different. I went back to look. 1 Sam 8:7-8 says that, by asking for a king, they had rejected God as their king, forsaking Him for other gods. So that's it, it wasn't what they asked for, but what what they asked for meant. The moral of the story is, as some wise lady (I can't recall who though) put it: If you persistently turn God away, then being the gentleman that He is, He will respect your wishes and graciously bow out of your life.

But why, I wondered, did the Israelites reject an almighty God for a mortal king? Was life so bad? I was curious and went back to look again. No, 1 Sam 5-7 is all about the Ark of God punishing Israel's enemies and delivering them in battle. Ok, so being constantly at war ain't that fun, but still, they were winning. So again, what's up?

I went back and looked yet again. Why would the Israelites exchange a powerful almighty king for a mere mortal (albeit they did that again with Jesus and Barrabas)? 1 Sam 8:4, 20 says that the people wanted a king "such as all the other nations have"; "... we want to be like all the other nations", they said. What???? Had they forgotten who had led them to victory time and again, victory over all the other nations that they now wanted to emulate? The only explanation must be that they had forgotten. They had forgotten.

As I do sometimes.

Moral of the story 2: Do not forget. God is the only guy you need to keep up with.

Anyways, as I said, rambly thoughts that went through my head this morning.

Lego church

What an amazing way to spend 75,000 Lego bricks!

This blog will be back on Thursday

So much to do before G's wedding... but must be picture of calm in front of stressed out bride. It's gonna be a fantastic wedding! Will definitely post pics.

P.S. New pics of lobak are up today (see 3rd August 2007 post) - I made a fresh batch for parents who complain I cook for everyone but them today.

Parts of a pig

Going to the wet market early this morning with my mum and nanny to shop for cuts of pork to cook lobak was a comic act in itself. The old granny manning the butcher must have been very amused by this "westernised" slip of a girl shopping at the wet market (although there were a few caucasians shopping there with children too, and old grannies nowadays have picked up some English, at least enough to know which cut of meat to sell you!). I only started cooking seriously abroad, so I only know the English names for different cuts of meat. But apparently old granny and nanny were good friends, so old granny patiently explained to me what the different pork cuts were called in Chinese:

Belly = San cheng rou (mandarin)
Shoulder = Zhu zhang rou (mandarin)*
Blade = Gap sum (cantonese)*

* I might have got these two mixed up. Old granny wasn't very clear, but she was emphatic that zhu zhang rou was the best cut for lobak.

Buying meat in US grocery stores to cook for The Boy's family was another comic skit altogether. But I had The Boy's dad with me, and he hunts, so he knows his meat. So all I had to do was explain to said dad what I wanted in English and he translated it to American for me. The butcher was very amused indeed, and must have been wondering what weird and wonderful things this small Asian chick was going to do with his meat. So this will be very useful for future reference, I think:

British cuts of pork

American cuts of pork

Parts of the cow coming up soon!

Ode to Durian

Look what dad brought home today! 10 stinky durians!

New Table of Contents

A perfect white rose
from The Boy

After spending too much holiday time messing with html codes courtesy of Beautiful Beta, I've added a new Table of Contents function in the sidebar. This allows you to view all posts in this blog and sort them according to title, date, or label. Especially useful if you are looking for

- a particular recipe (click any label 'recipes' for a complete list of my recipes and scroll up),
- food-related posts ('eats'),
- blogs about other hot stuff ('hotstuff'), and
- pics of my travels ('travels').

I might think of more labels later on, but have not labelled my rambling thoughts because I have many rambling thoughts...

Enjoy!

P.S. Somehow, in the process, my line spacing for previous posts has gone wonky... any suggestions?

Recipe: Lobak (Chinese Dark Braised Pork) / Asian Grocery Shopping in London

Lobak

Sorry I haven't updated properly for so long. After 3 sleepless nights, I finally submitted chapter 3, went home, packed, jumped in a cab, then a plane, watched lotsa sitcoms and a film on said plane, slept fitfully, and landed in humid green Singapore. My first act in Singapore: trooped down to nearby Lagoon with parents to buy a few (ok, I lie... many) of the best curry puffs in the world, 3 packets of oh luak (0yster omelette) and fried hay mee (prawn noodles) - not much, just enough to quench that longing for home that never leaves me.

My Singaporean friends and I keep pestering itinerant friends of ours to carry food back for us - sort of like long-distance take-away couriers. Don't jump, you customs officials reading this - it's all legit (no bootleg dvds thrown in, don't worry!). So while we were fussing over the latest shipment of zhang (glutinous rice parcels) courtesy of Mr Tan, and dividing it between us (I want two nyonya zhang and two bazhang, how many do you want?), I turn to C and Pok in a sudden epiphany:

You know... maybe we should just learn how to make this.

Clockwise from left: star anise,

cardammon seeds (for beef rendang), cinnamon sticks

Ah, and so the same epiphany many years ago, on a cold wintery London evening, started my quest to cook Singaporean. What I am truly grateful for is the increasingly cosmopolitan nature of Chinese supermarkets in London. By "cosmpolitan", I mean not just Chinese, things like galangal (lengkuas/blue ginger), serai (lemongrass), fresh tumeric (yellow ginger) etc. Now, I buy Chinese stuff at See Woo (Lisle Street) or Loon Fung (Gerrard Street), but for more South East Asian fare, I turn to New Loon Moon (Gerrard Street). I also appreciate the "cosmopolitanisation" of local supermarkets. Nowadays, I expect to find star anise, cinnamon sticks, cloves, five spice powder, pork belly (!) etc. at Tesco's and Waitrose - although the butcher is always the best bet for meat (The Ginger Pig in Marylebone and Borough Market have served me well). I have yet to find a good fishmonger, so any suggestions are very welcomed. I usually pick up seafood at Borough Market, cos Billingsgate is too far and I don't have a car (I have to say crabs sold in London are waaaay skinny... ok, fine, compared to Sri Lankan crabs).

My only hope now is that the diversification will extend to cover more American fare (I mean, there's even an Australian grocery store, for Pete's sake!), so I can experiment more - although I did find black beans for refried beans at Waitrose, Brunswick Square (my new favourite grocery store).

Pork marinated with five spice powder

So last Friday, C, Pok, the rose/orchid boy (aka flower boy) and friend, as well as Mr Tan on his penultimate day in London, came over to mine for dinner. Menu: lobak, lotus root soup, si ji dou (fried stringbeans - hey, beans are greens too!), and spanish omelette (request of flower boy). The lobak went over with my guests like a storm, so I've put up the recipe here. You can also use this recipe for Dark Braised Duck (Lu Ya or Lo Ap), but substitute the leeks for 3 stalks of spring onions (scallions), and throw in a few slices of ginger into the duck's body cavity.

Note: My Chinese is a mix of Mandarin, Cantonese, Teochew and Singaporese. Lobak (Singaporese) is also called Tau Eu Bak (Hokkien?) and Lu Rou (Mandarin).

Lobak simmering in pot

*****

RECIPE: LOBAK (Chinese Dark Braised Pork)

A - Meat
500g pork belly
(I use a mix of belly and shoulder, cos some people don't like fatty meat, especially westerners)
2 tbsp Five spice powder

B - Braise part 1
2 tbsp oil
2 oz. rock sugar (or plain sugar)
2 cloves garlic, minced

C - Braise part 2
1/2 cup dark soy (optional: mushroom flavoured)
1/2 cup light soy
1/4 cup sherry/vermouth
5 cups water

D - Braise part 3
2 star anise
1x3" cinnamon stick
2 leeks, chopped into 1" parts
1x2" blue ginger (lengkuas), sliced

*****

A - Rub five spice powder into meat and leave for at least 1/2 hour.

B - Heat oil in a wok on high. Add sugar. When all the sugar has melted, lower heat to medium so that it doesn't burn (the colour of the molasses should be golden yellow). Throw garlic in - warning: will bubble and sizzle!

C - Add both soys, sherry and water. Don't worry if the molasses harden - they will melt eventually. Turn the heat up to high and bring the mixture to a boil. The final mixture should be smooth and bubbling.

D - Slip A gently into the braising liquid (called lu in Chinese). Make sure all the meat is submerged. Add the spices, leeks and ginger. Braise for 3 hours, checking and stirring every 45 minutes. Control the fire and keep on a light rolling boil throughout. Lower the fire if the gravy becomes too thick or evaporates too much. You should still have at least 2 cups of gravy at the end (some of the meat poking out, but still largely sumberged).

Take the meat out and slice.** Arrange on a plate and drizzle gravy over. Serve with steamed pak choi and rice.

** I recently discovered that it is easier to slice when the meat has been refrigerated overnight, when I had prepared the same dish for a party. The meat and gravy should be refrigerated separately though - I am a firm Lock&Lock fan in this regard.

Pak choi

P.S. I tried this for the first time in my new Le Creuset oval cocotte, and it was fantastic - I love my new pots! I have never tried this in a crockpot, but am confident this recipe will work on an auto setting too. You can also keep any leftover lu in a ziploc bag in the freezer for your next braise, or really if you ever want some sauce over your rice. Happy cooking!

I miss my dogs.